STEIM, in partnership with the Geluid van Nederland project, presents a series of workshops addressing the creation, consumption, and reappropriation of field recordings.

The Geluid van Nederland website contains an archive of geocoded field recordings already collected as part of the Geluid van Nederland project. We encourage participants to add their own recordings from the workshop to this archive, and also to use recordings from the archive as part of their projects. The entire Geluid van Nederland archive is open for free creative use and will remain sustainably preserved as it grows.

For this first edition of the series we are happy to invite composer and producer Kim Cascone from San Francisco to lead a 3-day workshop on subtle listening.

The Subtle Listening workshop is a three day workshop for people who work with sound to help sharpen their listening skills. Through guided meditation, listening exercises, and a field recording project participants will learn a toolkit of techniques they can use any time to help heighten their sensitivity to the sounds of their immediate environment.

The workshop comes out of ideas from the short essay ‘The Grain of the Auditory Field’ which addresses why many field recordings fail to capture the imagination of the listener.

WHAT TO BRING //

Participants are responsible for bringing the following items to each session:

a laptop with audio software

a digital audio recorder & ample storage media for it

a stereo microphone (if not included on digital recorder)

one pair of over-the-ear headphones – no earbuds or open air headphones

loose clothing for meditation practice

two pairs of foam earplugs

an mp3 player – either software, separate mobile phone or a standalone player

a small notebook for keeping a dream journal and use as a sketch book

a USB stick with room on it for mp3 files

a blindfold – a scarf that can be tied around ones head will do

small hand-held items that make noise:

small bells

small percussion instruments (bells, triangles, small drums etc)

small rocks – no bigger than a palm of a hand

clickers – or any small metal objects

cellophane or aluminum foil

whatever people imagine would be useful

TEACHER //

Kim Cascone has a long history involving electronic music: he received his formal training in electronic music at the Berklee College of Music in the early 1970’s, and in 1976 continued his studies with Dana McCurdy at the New School in New York City.

After moving to San Francisco in the 1980’s, and gaining experience as an electronic technician in the audio industry, Cascone worked with David Lynch as Assistant Music Editor on both “Twin Peaks” and “Wild at Heart.” Cascone left the film industry in 1991 to concentrate on his company Silent Records, a label that he founded in 1986, transforming it into the U.S.’s premier ambient electronic music label.

At the height of Silent’s success in early 1996, he sold the company in order to pursue a career as a sound designer for Thomas Dolby’s company Headspace. After a two year stint at Headspace he worked for Staccato Systems as the Director of Content where he oversaw sound design using algorithmic synthesis for video games.

Since 2001 Kim has been touring Europe performing, conducting workshops and lecturing on post-digital aesthetics in sound art. Kim has released more than 40 albums of electronic music since 1984 and has recorded/performed with Merzbow, Keith Rowe, Tony Conrad, Scanner, John Tilbury, and Pauline Oliveros among others.

Cascone is the founder of the .microsound list which focuses on post-digital music and laptop performance (http://www.microsound.org) and his writing has been published in Computer Music Journal (MIT Press), Artbyte, Soundcultures, Parachute Journal, Junk Jet, Geometer; he has guest edited and written for Contemporary Music Review and acts as an advisor to the journal “Interference” based in Dublin, Ireland. Kim is a citizen of both the USA and Italy and lives on the coast of California, south of San Francisco, with his wife Kathleen and son Cage.